FOG BLOG CANADA LOG: FINDINGS ARE IN , COMMISSIONER FOUND IN TRUDEAU'S FAVOUR OVER 'EMERGENCIES ACT'

The Emergencies Act’s ‘very high threshold’ was met, commissioner rules in major report The “Freedom Convoy” amounted to a national emergency warranting the use of the Emergencies Act, but it was an emergency that could’ve been avoided.

That’s a central conclusion of the independent public inquiry into the federal government’s decision to invoke the never-before-used Emergencies Act to address the protest movement that ground downtown Ottawa to a halt and blockaded border crossings last February. Justice Paul Rouleau, who released his 2,000-page final report on Friday, found Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government met the “very high threshold” for invoking the Emergencies Act after failures by police and politicians to address the protests.

Invoking the Emergencies Act is a “drastic move, but it is not a dictatorial one” Rouleau wrote.

“When the decision was made to invoke the (Emergencies Act) on February 14, (2022) … there existed a national emergency arising from threats to the security of Canada. That necessitated the taking of special temporary measures,” Rouleau told reporters in Ottawa Friday.

Rouleau added that he didn’t reach the decision lightly and did so “with reluctance,” and that reasonable people could come to a different conclusion based on the 36-days of testimony and thousands of documents submitted to the commission. While Rouleau maintained the federal government was justified in invoking emergency powers, the commission questioned some of the specific powers – such as proposing to suspend protesters’ vehicle insurance

The finding amounts to a political win for Trudeau and his cabinet, who have maintained that the emergency powers were required as the protests spiraled out of control last February.

Rouleau’s report reflected heavily on how that spiral began, and how “lawful protest descended into lawlessness, culminating in a national emergency.”

“The fact that circumstances evolved to the point where cabinet reasonably considered it necessary to invoke the act is regrettable because, in my view, the situation that led to its use could likely have been avoided.”